the grass beyond the door
by verity candor
Summary: There's so much to talk about, and at the same time, nothing at all – so many things they've shared, a hundred different paths they've forgotten they walked together, a hundred more that they've walked apart. / Lily and Teddy meet again, many years and many miles from home. Multichapter.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 _"I won't change. I want to give_  
 _Everything away. To wander forever."_

 _-interrogative, tracy k. smith_

She's never really let go of him; no, that's not right. It's more that he came along with her, like the reddish dust from the garden she scrubbed her travel boots in – has she always thought of them as her travel boots? – before she'd left home the first time.

Maybe the distance of years and miles should make him irrelevant, a splinter on the barest edges of her memory. She's barely seen him since she started school, and in her memories he's just a smear of turquoise hair and a keen sparkle of earring – but maybe that's why she associates him so strongly with home.

In some ways, Teddy is a talisman of it even more than her parents. For her, home is still the house surrounded by trees in the countryside near The Holyhead Harpies' old practice grounds, and while her parents are the house in Godric's Hollow and James and Albus are Hogwarts and yearly bar trips in London, Teddy is bound up in her warmth-filled childhood like the grain of sand within a pearl.

It's easy to guess why she's thinking of that today - she's leaving again, and so she's itchy with nostalgia, trailing melancholy and self-pity as she heads to the anemic tree behind the inn. She could just buy a souvenir like a normal tourist, but that feels like cheating. She scrubs her boots in the dirt around its base carefully, trying to keep as much dirt as possible on the soles, as if this is the solemn, crucial part of a spell.

The concierge-bellhop-and-room-service is staring confusedly at her from the top window. She waves cheerily and blows him a kiss – shocking him into retreat – because she doesn't yet know enough Greek to tell him that the only way she can leave is if she carries a little bit of this away with her, on her feet.

Inside the room, she takes off her boots carefully and pulls out the battered map in her trunk, affixing it to the wall with a haphazard charm. Shutting her eyes, she scrabbles on the wardrobe behind her until she grabs a handful of toffees from the half-open bag, and flings them in the general vicinity of the wall. She peers through one eye and then the other, and then whispers "Land ho!" on sighting a telltale gold splotch stuck to a land mass. Stalking closer, she plucks the toffee off the wall and taps the map with her wand until she can see the place clearly. She pops the candy into her mouth and murmurs the name under her breath until she has it memorized. Maastricht, Maastricht, Maastricht.

It doesn't take long go. She's already packed, and the Greek Embassy is almost too full of helpful wizards and witches. She's got her Portkey set up and ready in under two days, and both her suitcases stuffed in a wristlet from her Aunt Hermione an hour before it leaves. She shuts her eyes, and can't decide if it's a prayer or a wish when she begins to chant No rain, no rain, no rain.

Happily, there is no rain. There is also very little sky, and too much shade. But, after so many mountains and expansive farms in Greece, there is something comforting about the city streets. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend she is being cradled by the hum of a million heartbeats pressing against her. At her unfortunate hour of waking (she really ought to bully Vic or Roxy into inventing a spell for jetlag) there is something about the way the light touches the buildings which makes it look almost like London.

She unpacks her belongings into the rented flat, and traces her fingers over the lacquered box she bought in the gullies of Delhi. She can't actually remember the market, but inside the box, within a vial marked Spring 2030, is the fierce throng of people dashing and squabbling through the streets, the bright colours of a hundred dresses strung out for display and the jangle of jewelry amidst the harsh symphony of the street.

She runs her fingers across the box one more time, a bone-deep satisfaction in carrying all of these cities with her, pristine and beautiful and untouched by time or distance, before she replaces it on her highest shelf, far from the prying eyes of anyone who walks in. She carefully digs out the travel boots, and slips them on before she twines the bright scarf she's grown to favor around her throat. The box is always the second-to-last thing she puts away, and then the boots. She's almost tacked the scarf on to the routine, but it still teeters on the edge of being permanent. She swirls on a leathery brown coat over her blouse, and swirls herself out and into the city.


	2. Chapter 2

_"This kind of gravity is like falling through a cloud, forgetting it all, and then being told about it later. . . It must be true. If it were not, then when did these strands of silver netting attach to my hair?  
_ _The problem was finding that you were real and not just a dream of clouds."_

 _\- love letter (clouds), sarah manguso_

It's almost dark – a sweeping eyelid is shutting over top of the buildings, and Lily wants to get back inside the hotel before the night wakes up and splashes light over the streets. But it's also her second night in the city, and – per tradition – her first night out with the boots, her first night with the dust and gum wrappers and all of the precious litter the city is built on.

It must be because she's been thinking of him so much, but Lily recognizes the bright spark of laughter winging its way over the semicircles of the streetlamps even before she sees his face.

Her head shoots up, half disbelieving, but – there – a thatch of bright green hair (still?) caught in the streetlight next to a lit doorway. She feels a sudden leaping recognition when he turns and his profile is exactly the same as it was a decade-and-a-half ago – handsome, notes a part of her that was missing when she was ten – but every part that wasn't missing fifteen years ago wants to charge across the streets and fling herself at his knees, screaming what she's done that day and waiting for him to rub her hair and look down and call her 'Carrot.'

Her grin is so wide she can feel it pushing at her ears, and "Teddy!" she's calling out, suddenly, "Teddy!"

His head pops up in an eerie imitation of her own, and he looks around wildly until he catches sight of her waving arm. Even from a distance, she can see the stunned shock on his face, and the slowly dawning disbelief it is turning into as they move towards one another.

"Lily," he says, once they are close enough, "Lily Potter."

And then, looking just as overwhelmed as Lily feels, he envelops her in a hug, beaming. He steps back after a moment, shaking his head.

"Merlin, you – you look just like your mum from far away – for a minute, I actually thought Ginny'd time-traveled or something –" he breaks off with a laugh, and shakes his head again, looking her up and down incredulously.

From close-up, Lily realizes that he doesn't look exactly like her Teddy either – there are a few spiderwebby crow's feet at the corner of his eyes, and a pair of laugh lines are etched firmly at the corner of his mouth – quotation marks framing his every word.

Lily has no doubt that Teddy's very quotable indeed.

"What are you doing here?" he manages at last, and Lily shrugs, helplessly, still beaming up at him.

"I'm – I'm traveling –" she gets out, and then, "Where've you been? What are you doing here?" she asks, and it's half Lily Luna, twenty-four-year-old-on-vacation, and half Lily-Billy, six-year-old wedding planner with a mission.

"I - The usual – Cursebreaking millennia-old curses, killing re-animated grave guardians –" he lets out another half-laugh, "I even saw a manticore – it was nearly dead, poor thing – you were always asking if you could have one back when –"

"Really? I did?" Lily says, with a frown. She had barely gotten through her Care of Magical Creatures classes awake – when had she liked manticores?

Teddy shrugs, and laughs a little nervously – and this she remembers perfectly, a laugh of little bells, shown off to best advantage around pretty girls who whispered cheeky comments about his hair –

"You… well, you wouldn't remember, that's – wow." He chokes out another "Merlin," on a laugh, before he looks back at her for a slow moment.

"You're so tall," he says at last, disbelievingly.

She is – she's 5' 9", and Teddy noticing it is somehow the thing that pushes her closest to crying that night.

"Are you free? Do you want to get a drink?" she asks instead, scrubbing at her face to push the specter of tears away. "There's a -" she turns to point.

"Yeah, okay," he says, glancing away, back again, voice a little scratchy. "Yeah."

There's so much to talk about, and at the same time, nothing at all – so many things they've shared, a hundred different paths they've forgotten they walked together, a hundred more that they've walked apart. They talk about as many as they can – and in between there are the gaps they fill in for one another – marriages, promotions, the childhood memories that predicted them and all of the ones that didn't.

Teddy says a little, very little about leaving England and Lily tells him just as little about her job at the Prophet, and how she loves it, really, but sometimes you have to leave and come back to things, find a way to make them mean something despite the distance.

Awkwardly, not awkwardly, she asks if Ted is dating, has gotten married yet – it comes out strangely, she knows, because him being old enough to have children is terrifying to her in some way that Rose or James or Molly being that old isn't. He shoots her a look that suggests he's been asked too often, then smiles and shakes his head.

"No, not yet. Though I did just meet a lovely woman recently," he adds, waggling his eyebrows.

"Oh?" Lily says, trying to seem more interested than amused.

"Mmhmm. Didn't speak the same language, but judging from the hexes she threw at me, I made quite an impression."

She blinks in confusion. "Er. What?"

He pauses and shoots her a sheepish grin, "…And that would be my cue to mention she was a spirit haunting a crypt in Java." When she starts to laugh, he shoots her another rueful smile. "I'm usually funnier, I promise. And my dates go better, too."

Lily shrugs philosophically, "Well, it's not the worst date I've heard." She launches into one of her best stories – involving a mistaken shag, a naked roommate, a sheep and four pairs of pants, before realizing that far from laughing along, Ted is looking at her, slightly horrified.

"…What?" Lily says, puzzled.

"It's nothing- It's just… you've grown up, haven't you?" he says with a short laugh.

A short laugh – a disapproving one? – and Lily feels her fists clench beneath the table.

She has been forced to have this conversation so many times – in so many ways – and she is almost, almost ready to have it again. _Almost_. She settles for eyeing him sharply and whacking at his arm.

"Well, people grow up, you old bat," she says.

He shrugs and bumps over a seat to plop down next to her, "Yeah, well, look at me – I've managed to avoid the ravages of time, haven't I?" He says the last bit with a dramatic lilt to his voice, and Lily hits him again on principle.

"Oi!"

"Just because you're a desperate old man-"

"Hey!"

"-who can't let go of his youth-"

"Feelings!"

"-doesn't mean you've actually gotten away from growing up."

"You are _awful_." He pretends to pout at her, making his eyes wide and dewy, before he tugs at his ear. "Is it the earring, though? Does it make me look like I'm trying too hard?"

Lily nods, making her eyes as serious and innocent as possible, though she can't actually change them the way Teddy did, and he sighs and crumples against the chair.

"Oh, woe is me," he wails, throwing a hand up against his forehead as Lily begins to snicker, "I am undone, it seems, by my desire to impress hordes of younger, sexier women – Alas, alack –"

A pair of tourists walk by and one points at Teddy going, "Shakespeare?" and Lily's snicker devolves into full-blown laughter, which sets Teddy off, until they both conclude that next time they meet, theatre is absolutely not allowed as a conversational topic.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Heart makes a wrong turn._  
 _Heart locked in its gate of thorns._  
 _Heart with its hands folded in its lap._  
 _Heart a blue skiff parting the silk of the lake."_

 _-heart, dorianne laux_

Cities are – cities are painted in glass – a sunstreaked window in the morning, a water smoothed shape in a river. Maastricht is a glassblower's masterpiece – layers and layers and layers of years, not muddied by swirling together, but wrapped by a thoughtful hand. Neat. Artistic. Well-planned. In the morning, the sun lights up the streets like a beacon. Lily's happiest being pulled along in the undertow like a bit of seaweed, but she always struggles to tangle herself in the world when someone is with her.

So she's not quite sure why she sends the letter (folded in the shape of a swallow, dirt-brown and a bit tattered in the tail) swooping over rooftops. A half hour later, a parchment mouse accosts her ankle on the street.

 _Of course – where to?_

Of course, she thinks, marveling a little.

She's got a list of thirty places she is planning to go to – six for each century of tourist attractions she can find. Okay, not quite _centuries,_ just her own arbitrarycategorizations – Medieval-y, Renaissance-y, that middle bit of time between then and now, geographic proximity to her hotel room. And then places to eat if they seem decent or cheap, any other odds and ends she's struck by in her haphazard browsing of tourist annuals.

She goes back to her hotel and copies everything out by hand for herself, starts over again if she makes a spelling mistake. She's nervous about talking to Teddy, and nervous about not saying anything. She wants to smack herself for inviting him. Lily dithers over her jacket, leaves the scarf, leans back to snatch it up again.

"You don't really have to come, you know," she says to him once they've found each other, peering a bit nervously at his face.

"Yes, but I'd like to," Teddy says cheerfully, pausing to scratch at his elbow before hurrying to move back to her side. "I already promised, and if I didn't, I'd honestly just be in the hotel room counting tiles in the floor."

Lily finds it pleasing that he has to work to match her stride if he falls behind, and thinks about that instead of the little jolt that hits her stomach at the thought of her own hotel room, and the seventy-two curlicues on the east wall she recounted for two hours last night. It's possible, she considers, that she is a bit lonely. Not alone, necessarily – heaven knows that both local boys and tourists are eager to buy her drinks – but, well.

"I, well,–" she shoots him another look, then glances back at her brochure before he looks back. "Well, if you're sure. I wanted to go see the – er, wait – the Museum… aan het… Vrijthof? – I definitely said that wrong." She gnaws her lip, glaring as though the hapless paper will reveal the right answer.

She hears a laugh besides her. Teddy stops abruptly when she turns to him, then drops helplessly into another grin. " _I_ don't have any suggestions," he tells her.

She swats at him, and he laughs again. She wonders what she'd have to do to make him stop laughing. Punch a kitten maybe. Rob a chocolate shop. She can feel her mouth shifting, and she tries to catch it back.

"What?" he asks. "Is the Museum aan van Headface a record of comedy routines?"

" _Ted_ dy," she whines, and is reminded uncomfortably of James' daughter Annie. She changes her tone, and starts again. "It's a collection of Muggle furnishings, I think– hold on – here: 'featuring period rooms with 17th- and 18th-century furnishings, Maastricht silver, porcelain, glassware, Maastricht pistols, and a collection of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch paintings and 20th-century paintings from local artists.'"

Teddy's eyebrow shoots up. "You're… taking me to see old furniture?"

"Furnishings – it says furnishings –" She's lost hold of the laugh, it's poised right above her bottom lip.

"Meaning plates. And curtains, and _chairs_ ," Teddy continues decisively. He adds with a sigh, "All of my grandmother's things were like that; even the spoons had a pedigree."

Lily shoots an amused look at him. "And how exactly would you breed pedigree spoons?" she asks, "Only the shiniest ones are allowed to have litters?"

"Oh no, only the biggest ones, because -" Teddy starts with a sly grin, before coughing and seeming to reconsider. "Because they'd be able to pick up the most soup?" he finishes.

Lily wants both to laugh at him, and to hit him.

"You're allowed to make jokes about penises –" she starts, and Teddy's eyes flick to her, "–though _that_ honestly sounded like it was going to be awful," she finishes tartly.

He turns that still-startled look back to her and she glares.

" _Don't_ ," she says, "Whatever it is, don't. It's all right if _you_ talk about having dates or make jokes and all, but the second I bring it up, I'm some sort of a … a … you know." She's heard this rhetoric from enough people, and she has every intention of nipping it in the bud from Teddy if she can. "It's not the 1900s, and I don't have to go living my life like some sort of a nun in convent – "

Teddy interrupts her, throwing up his hands defensively.

"Hey, Lily-billy," he cries, "I– I've known you since you were born!" He drops his hands, subsiding with a laugh. "Since the 'Is kissing wet?' talk. Last time I saw you, you were – _very_ young," he says, shaking his head disarmingly.

And Lily's almost disarmed by it – _almost_. "Oh, hell with you," she snaps at him, and pulls ahead, suddenly irritable.

There are a few moments of silence while he catches up to her.

"Happens a bit, I guess?" he ventures after a few more moments, and Lily hums in response. He nods in her peripheral vision. "And a lot of it from people who don't mean to be condescending."

It's not quite a question and not quite a statement. Lily turns to him again. He looks appropriately rueful, but he's looking away from her - into his own memory, maybe.

"Dad? Or mum?" Lily asks, and he nods in acknowledgment.

"Ginny," he says. "I don't think Harry ever really got comfortable enough with it to try."

Lily shrugs. "I think he's all right now – just about blistered Jamie's ears off last year."

Teddy's eyes crinkle.

"You still call him Jamie?" he asks, and Lily's responding grin is wicked. "Still hates it, then," Teddy concludes. He glances back at her after another second. "Are you done speed walking, or are you still upset?"

Lily debates it, relents.

"Not my problem you can't keep up," she says lightly, aiming a playful kick at him. He dodges, and makes a face of mock-dismay.

They wend their way through the city – Teddy is merciless in the museum, and she chokes back threads of laughter. A museum employee whispers to her in Dutch and beams like a sun, and they eat in a charming square with another miserably tangled name. Lily makes Teddy snort up his drink mispronouncing it into nonsense, they wander into a series of stores where they are better behaved – and finally the best part, the part Lily's been waiting for.

"Helpoort," Lily tells him, beaming, "It means Hell Gate."

Teddy nods, staring up at it. "So," he says, "It's a… rock."

There's a pregnant pause there, while he waits for her to make sense of it for him, the squat, gray edifice against the thrumming excitement in her voice.

"It's – um, it's eight hundred years old," she says, trying to find words that fit, that tell him what she means. "And they've rebuilt the whole city around it – two or three times. But this is still here. It's… old. And old things, they… have weight, you know? They last. All these things happen around them, or to them, and they survive it. They carry all of that and it… it stays on them. They _survive._ You can see everything they've gone through, and they are just _more_ by what it's happened to them. Not less."

She hasn't taken her eyes off the gate, but she can feel Teddy shifting beside her. She's waiting for him to say something, but he doesn't.

He shifts, stills, lets out a long breath.

Behind them is the sound of the river, and in front of them, the gate and its towers – tall enough to be imposing, but still _human –_ still built with stone, built by hand.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Your eyes met mine.  
The fetch of a wave is the distance it travels, you said,  
from where it is born at sea to where it founders to shore.  
I must go back to where it all began."_

 _-the fetch, ciaran carson_

Later, in her room, Lily taps her wand against her ankle, rolls a flask in her hand, and follows herself through the day, from the thrill of setting out into that fresh morning, to the moment after she dropped Teddy off, before he went inside, when he'd bumped his shoulder against hers long enough to make it something softer, and said "Thanks for inviting me, Lil."

She hits herself in the ankle again, hard enough to sting, and tries to pick out something good enough to put in her box.

The problem is, she's already shared Maastricht – worse, she's built Maastricht into her mind with Teddy spun through it, spoiling everything.

How's she going to make anyone understand why she'd wanted to see the Museum –all those careful collections of things people had loved – when all they'll see is Teddy cracking jokes all the way through?

What's the moment at Helpoort, brimming over with layered silence, warm with the wonder of being _understood_ , going to mean to them when it just looks like two all-but strangers standing in front of an old stone thing?

It's the same problem as always, the reason she'd needed time off from the Prophet in the first place.

She gives herself three vivid and creative expletives before she lets herself fall across the bed and kick her heels in the air like she is ten again and ready to scream.

The problem is, the best parts of it, the parts she'd loved the most, _shouldn't_ be the best parts, and now she has to go back out and do it all over again.

 _You big nuisance,_ she tells Teddy's face in her mind, and even in her mind, he doesn't pretend to be ashamed.

Outside, the sky is deep and dark. She sighs heavily, and stretches herself towards the furthest corners of the bed before bouncing her heels off of the leg of the bed. Tomorrow, then. She'll go back tomorrow.

-x-

"Oh, _no_ , you aren't," Lily says, at the museum the next morning.

It's Teddy, of course it is, and he is – thwarting her.

He turns around and says, "Ah."

"Ah?" Lily echoes, wondering if she should be offended.

"It's – well, it's not that I didn't _like_ going with you –" Teddy begins, that conciliatory tone creeping into his voice.

"It's _fine_ ," Lily says, exasperatedly, "I planned to come alone, too."

He shrugs. "Great minds, then?"

She purses her lips over another laugh, and crosses her arms instead.

"Copycat," she says accusingly.

"I _was_ here first," Teddy says, shifting his shoulders so it's an invitation instead of a dismissal.

Lily takes a step closer, accepting it. "Well, I'll let it slide this time, but if we show up in the same outfit tomorrow, I'm going to be really upset."

The museum is very worth the second visit – this time without Teddy's witticisms. The collection is small, but lovingly maintained, and the museum is nearly empty that day. They are sent off with audio guides to the displays (Lily politely pretends not to notice Teddy fumbling with the earphones), and a gaggle of friendly staff members hovers behind them, eager to gesture them further along in the exhibits.

Lily eats it up, like something sweet and soft in her mouth. She's tempted to squirrel away something to bring home with her, but also knows that she would feel guilty every time she looked at it.

After the end of the trip the staff shunts them towards the museum's small cafe; the tea is refreshing, the food is passable, and all throughout the meal, Teddy sneaks looks at her over the rim of his cup.

Lily's mind, meaning her imagination, has the unfortunate tendency of leaping into wakefulness a great deal earlier than any other part of her, for example, her common sense or the great majority of her logical thinking. That is to say, Lily is very familiar with being looked at over the rim of a cup by other boys. Lily's common sense offers the argument that Teddy is not other boys, and it's mostly her irritation over the clangor this sets up between her forebrain and hindbrain that makes her snap at Teddy.

"What?" she says.

His eyebrows shoot up, and Lily, to her chagrin, feels quite effectively chastised. This is also galling, since even her mother's pointed eyebrow raise has long since lost its sting.

"What?" she says again, this time more calmly.

Teddy shrugs and looks at her. "Museums," he says, "And the Helpoort, yesterday. I know you said you left the Prophet – is it because of all of this? Because this is what you actually want to do?"

Lily says, "I think it's just Helpoort, actually?"

Teddy lifts his eyes, considering it. "Well. Just Helpoort, then, sorry."

"And, I mean – I don't know," Lily says, finally, "I thought the Prophet was what I loved doing. Talking to people, and getting to say what I thought and then, suddenly, it just – It felt like I was just writing the same stories about the same things – I couldn't figure out how to really _say_ anything important anymore." She takes a breath, "I felt stuck. Stuck in – in my life."

She doesn't want to meet his eyes, which is terrible, because she's _not_ embarrassed about it. She just – it's just a way of protecting herself. Just a way of saying something hard while pretending she isn't.

In her peripheral vision, Teddy is nodding, so she frowns at the knot of her hands in her lap, and decides to risk it.

" _You_ know. Wasn't it like that when you left?" She does look at him then, gauging his reaction. He's surprised, uncomfortable, maybe a little displeased, and a little vengeful part of her is saying _, Now we're even,_ even as the rest of her is stumbling to fix it. "Or – you know, it might not have been. I didn't mean to assume."

He shakes his head, the surprise fading away. "No, I – I just didn't think you'd noticed. That you'd remember all of that, you know, that long ago."

She's still looking at him, a little wary, not quite head-on. "So what did happen? I remember it was right after I started my first year, so you were, what… twenty?"

Teddy gives her a brittle smile, shakes his head again.

"Well, Gram died, that year," he says, "And, you know, Harry and Ginny – your mum and dad – they were great, I'm not saying they weren't. But Gram was _my_ family. Gram was all I had. Your, you know, your parents and James and Albus… it was different, all of a sudden. It didn't feel like it was big enough without her there. It was like you said, before; I felt stuck. I couldn't – breathe."

He's got his eyes fixed on the grain of the table, one thumb reflectively rubbing the edge of his teacup – not meeting her eyes, she realizes. Keeping himself safe, the same as she was. It makes her feel suddenly, unfairly warm towards him, because this is something they share: that need to protect themselves, to speak regardless.

"So you've been wandering ever since?" she asks, finally tipping her gaze back to her own side of the table.

"I mean, it's not _just_ that," he says, shifting back to himself, "I'm doing what I love, and I would have picked this, anyway. I just got here differently than I expected," he finishes, with that wry smile.

Lily gives him one of her own. "I always thought you wanted to be an Auror, like Dad," she says.

This makes Teddy grimace.

"I," he says, firmly, "Was _never_ going to be an Auror. My Defense grades alone…" he huffs out a laugh, rubbing his neck. "And I don't think I would have liked it," he adds after a moment, careful.

His mother had been an Auror, Lily remembers belatedly – how stupid, to say _like Dad_ – like it was the _obvious_ – she shakes her head, abruptly tired of inching through this.

"And that's enough heavy conversation," she says, clapping her hands on the table. "Let's talk about something else."

Teddy laughs, and shifts his chair in. "All right, let's. Tell me what else you're going to see today."

Lily tilts her head at him. "You're not coming?"

"Working this afternoon, unfortunately." He wrinkles his nose at her teasingly.

She mirrors his expression, and responds, "That's a pity. I wanted to show you the carpet museum, too."

Teddy throws back his head and laughs. "I'm genuinely sorry to miss that," he says, still grinning. "You're going to have to tell me everything."

Lily snickers. "Teddy, my dear," she says, "That was what we like to call a _joke_."

He lifts his hand, acknowledging the point, and then shoots her another grin.


	5. Chapter 5

_"in the early morning, I know his loneliness,_  
 _like mine, human and sad,_  
 _but different, too, his private pain_  
 _and pleasure I can never enter even as he comes_  
 _closer"_

 _-chance meeting, susan browne_

They part ways outside the museum – Teddy offers her a companionable wave, and then ducks into an alley to Apparate – and Lily's left with Maastricht exactly where she wants it: all to herself.

She stands there for a second and takes a deep breath, a city map in her hands, enough destinations to glut herself on – and is stuck. She stares at the map for a few seconds, eyes flicking from circled location to circled location, and folds it up.

All she can remember about Teddy's grandmother is her hair – light brown and iron-grey. She's been trying, but she can't recall what her face looked like; Lily can barely remember meeting her.

It leaves a bitter taste on her tongue. Lily knows a little of the story, how Teddy's grandmother left her entire family to be with Teddy's grandfather, and then lost him and Teddy's parents in the war.

It seems so sad, to lose a family twice over, and then to be forgotten by the people around her, too.

Did it help, to have Teddy? Did it make it… harder somehow, to only have a baby who didn't remember the people she loved either?

Lily thinks of all the spaces for her uncle Fred that still wait in her grandmother's house, and has to wonder how much silence stretched between Teddy and his Gram.

And still, he'd said _Gram was all I had._

 _What's that like?_ She wonders fruitlessly, wandering near a shop window. How much kindness does it take to build a family out of that? It's easy to imagine Teddy doing it, kindness as simple as standing for him, but how much effort had it taken Mrs. Tonks to do it, on the back of a loss like hers?

Lily is reconstructing that life - without the bulwarks of Mum and Dad or James and Albus to build herself upon, just two people trying to carry one another - and realizes with crushing inadequacy that she couldn't have lived it.

If it had been her, just her and Teddy – the door near her opens suddenly, and Lily realizes she's been dawdling near the window far too long.

 _This is why you always stick to a schedule,_ she chides herself before turning to face the man coming outside.

"Wil je binnenkomen?" he asks, gesturing through the door. Lily doesn't know Dutch, but it's easy to guess he's inviting her inside. She nods at him, and finds her pleasant smile in time to receive an answering one.

It's a lovely store, packed with books that are strewn on tables and shelves in a nearly haphazard fashion, but with enough elegant touches to show the careful orchestration behind it. Her pleasant smile turns into a true one, and she shares it with the owner as she wanders towards the shelves.

Finally, here is something that is only hers, only hers and still worth sharing.

It's nearly dark before she leaves, clutching three books in her hands: one in French, one in German, and one mostly pictures. The French she thinks she can muddle through on her own, but she had bought the German book simply for the pleasure it had given her to hold it. It's a steady, hefty weight, bound in slightly cracked leather.

She moves it to the top of her small pile again, filled with satisfaction. Now that she's back inside her hotel, the cracked leather is a rich, doe-eyed brown in the light of the sunset.

It can't be too challenging to learn German, can it? Surely someone she knows can teach her. Lily considers the people she knows who have been to Germany, and ends up at Teddy again. Then again, maybe he was the sort who got by on hand gestures and his expressions. She snickers at the image this brings up.

He might appreciate the picture book in that case, she thinks, a little snidely. Lily takes another look at the sky, darkening to a velvet blue, and considers. He might be done with whatever he's working on, and if he isn't… it couldn't hurt to ask.

She considers how to send him a note for a few strained moments, and settles on a paper mouse, hoping he'll recognize his note to her in it.

 _You don't happen to speak German, do you?_

She's well on her way to reconsidering her knowledge of French when she receives a response.

 _Only enough to say "Can I eat this?" Why?_

This one comes properly carried by an owl, and she has to hunt through the detritus of her luggage to find something to give her.

"Thank you," she murmurs, running a knuckle over the feathers at the bird's neck.

 _Went shopping._ She sends back, and is pleased when the little bird comes back.

"Late for you, isn't it?" She asks the owl. She's heaped the remainder of her owl treats by the windowsill, and she watches the bird peck at them for a second before turning to the letter.

 _All right, I'll pay for dinner if you'll explain._

She laughs at the obvious concession, and sends a quick _Sure,_ before abandoning the French novel and hurrying for her scarf.


	6. Chapter 6

_"You give me midnight apples in a car with the windows down.  
You give me the flashbulbs of an electrical storm.  
You give me thunder and the suddenly green underbellies of clouds."_

 _\- catalogue of ephemera, rebecca lindenberg_

"So, German?" Teddy asks, as soon as she is near the café he'd said he was waiting by.

She huffs out a laugh, and stops. "At least let me catch my breath," she says, pausing to do just that.

"Trying to get food before I get answers, I see." He shakes his head with cheerful chagrin. "You really are Albus' sister, aren't you?"

Lily laughs again. "James makes up for the both of us; he's still picky," she says with the loving disdain of a younger sibling.

Teddy shakes his head again, holding back a smile, and turns towards their table. "It's not expensive," he warns her.

Lily shrugs, "I've been traveling on a reporter's savings; I'm hardly expecting it."

"Ah, yes, traveling for fun. I remember those days," he says wistfully.

She raises her eyebrows. "Are they working you that hard?"

His smile dims a little, and he shrugs noncommittally. "Maybe I am getting old." He says at last.

She makes a face and pretends to shoo him away. "Eugh, no! Don't get your old-ness on me. _I'm_ going to stay young forever."

This brings the smile back full force, so Lily subsides.

-x-

She likes how Teddy listens to her; all his attention narrowly focused even though she's only describing the bookstore to him, its charm and eccentricity.

"It would be easier if I could show you, really," Lily finishes, taking another bite of her dinner, and Teddy answers, "Sure. I'll be free again tomorrow, and you can never _really_ have enough books."

Lily finishes chewing and asks, "I've been wondering about that, honestly – what kinds of things do you like to read?"

Teddy raises an eyebrow at her. "Guess," he says, a mischievous dimple surfacing.

Lily narrows her eyes and takes a bite out of her sandwich, thinking. "Thrillers," she ventures at last. "Like… detective mysteries."

The other eyebrow rises.

Lily wrinkles her nose. "No?"

"You didn't go for travel," Teddy says, "I was surprised."

There a silence for a moment, before Lily says, "Well?"

"Well?" Teddy says.

"Was I right?"

He laughs, looks away. "Close. I do _like_ mysteries, but most of the time I'm more likely to pick up – well, biographies. Artists. You know."

Lily leans forward, disbelieving. "Really," she says.

Teddy snickers. "I don't have the face of a biography lover?"

"You have green hair, Teddy!" Lily exclaims, " _Who_ would guess that?"

He takes a moment to look very superior. "Not you, clearly."

She sticks her tongue out at him.

"Oh, _there's_ my Lily-Billy," he says, toasting her with a laugh.

-x-

They circle by the bookstore on their way home, peering through the storefront into the dimmed interiors.

"There's where I found the German book," Lily murmurs, pointing through the fog of her breath on the window to one of the shelves.

Teddy's beside her, and he sidles closer, following her finger. "I see it," he says, quietly, "What about the other ones?"

"Mm, there and there," she says, and he nods.

"Why are we whispering?" he asks, after a second, and they're grinning again.

When they make it back to Lily's hotel, she dithers outside the door for a second running a hand over her bag's strap.

"Do you want to come in? I've got something to show you," she says. Teddy is worrying at the corner of his jacket, and he meets her eyes with surprise.

"Yeah, all right," he says after a moment, dropping the cloth.

Lily doesn't have a true Pensieve with her, but she wants – sharing Maastricht has been a pleasure, a – a revelation. She wants to know what Teddy will make of her other cities, the memories she's collected and curated, her own beautiful souvenirs.

He follows her towards the staircase, careful with the front door and the door to her room.

"I like what you've done with the place," he says, when they're inside, "It's much nicer than my room."

Lily shoots him a quelling look, reaching up for the lacquered box on her shelf. There are a few moments when she's sure it's just been pushed to the back, before she realizes it isn't there.

She freezes, and then launches herself onto her toes, scouring the shelf before she realizes what's happened. She spins around, noting at last the opened lock on her suitcase, the disorder near the wardrobe – the missing things.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Teddy's leaning over her, looking worried.

Lily all but collapses onto the bed, thoughts swirling into a crescendo that thumps to the unsteady beat of _All of them? All of them. All of them._

"It's – someone's been in here. Someone took –" Lily feels like the air is gone from the room, she's breathing harshly amidst the sudden rustle of Teddy turning and taking in the room again. "It's – all right, most of it's all right, but – they took all of the places I went, I was – I had them here. All of them. For – I was going to show you what I had seen," she continues vaguely, seeing the confusion still etched on his face, "I was going to… when I got home I was going to have all of the places where I'd gone and…" She'd been so proud of the idea, she was going to carry it all that way, there was almost no valuable thing she hadn't stored in the case –

"Memories." Teddy says, interrupting her thoughts with a look of comprehension, "You – oh. They took – ah. Okay, okay – I understand."

There's an almost unnoticeable pause before he says "Lily," again, "Lily. It's all right, it's not -" and there's a little, breathy hitch to his voice – he's… laughing? "-It's not the end of the world, silly billy."

It's the singsong nickname that does it – Lily's head whips up, and she glares at him, and even as she notices his face, the way it's filled up with nothing but shining concern, she's already yelling,

"It's not funny – how can you – it's not _funny_ , Teddy – this was – this was all I have, all I had to keep with me. This was important – it wasn't – it's not – "

But Teddy's staring at her like she's slapped him across the face, and she's cut short by the sheer, stunned astonishment on his face – the absolute, entire lack of laughter.

"You think I was –" There is a crackle of sound in his throat, a scoff almost. It's the bitterest noise she's ever heard from him. His voice is still gentle. "Lily, my mum and dad died before I was a year old. All I have of them are old pictures and – and stories somebody else has told me – you think I'm going to laugh at you?" He's staring at her like he's only just seeing her, like she's crawled out of the ocean, something ugly.

"That's not – that's not why –" she chokes out. "I need to have _something_ , I need to take something home." And she's horribly, angrily aware of the quaver in her voice, how close it is to cracking open on the word _home_.

Teddy's frowning down at her, an unhappy wrinkle poised between his eyes.

He doesn't say it will be fine, or that she shouldn't worry, or that they will find all of them and fix this. He should, some part of her thinks, he should say it anyway. He stares a minute longer at her before he slides his hand under her arm and tugs. "Get up," he says briskly, "Come on."

Lily slaps his arm away. "Just go away," she says, still working away tears.

"Lily," he says firmly, leaning down to her level, like she is young, like she is a child, "Come outside."

"Don't –" The scolding is automatic, "I'm not– I'm just –" she starts again, and then, remembers that she isn't.

She offers him her hand like something conciliatory, and Teddy's eyes flick from her palm to her face for a second before he pulls her out of the door.

"I'll help if I can. I promise," he whispers over his shoulder, and Lily manages a smile, just for him.


End file.
